by M. D. Cooper
A silvery laugh filled the air, a sound like a thousand tiny bells ringing.
Priscilla said the words without emotion, though Rika could detect a hint of yearning. Somehow, this strong, independent woman wanted to lose herself in the mind of an AI.
The thought almost caused Rika to physically recoil. It was an anathema to her; the stuff they made horror vids about.
Rika realized her mouth was hanging open. First she’d witnessed Tanis tearing apart matter into subatomic particles to harvest its energy and destroy Nietzscheans, and now she was listening to a woman speak of merging her mind with an AI, and being reborn as an ascended being.
Priscilla gestured to her right.
“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Priscilla. I hope I see you again before you…whatever.”
The sound of tiny bells filled the space once more, and Priscilla winked.
POWER
STELLAR DATE: 09.09.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Rika stepped into the conference room to see Tanis sitting at the head of the table, with Captain Rachel at her side, and another man she didn’t recognize next to the I2’s captain.
On the other side of the table sat Major Tim, next to a man and woman who wore Marauder uniforms. The woman bore the insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel, and the man was a full-bird.
“Good of you to join us, Rika,” Major Tim said, glancing over his shoulder at her as she entered the room.
Rika was a fan of symmetry, though she personally had none—what, with her gun-arm—so she sat on the ISF side of the table, next to the man she didn’t know.
The ship’s database flagged him as ‘Borden’, a colonel in the ISF, and Rika added that information to her own internal roster. From what she could tell, the ISF military was small, comparatively speaking, but they seemed to have a lot of high-ranking officers. She supposed it may have to do with the fact that they could crew a thousand-meter warship with just a dozen people.
Not a big need for grunts in their space force.
Rika hadn’t responded to Major Tim’s passive-aggressive greeting, and the Marauder Lieutenant Colonel, ‘Alice’, by the name tag Rika could now see, shot her a dirty look. “Captain, respond to the major when he addresses you.”
Rika opened her mouth to reply, but Tanis spoke up. “Colonel, it’s my fault that Rika was delayed. I asked Priscilla to clarify some intel with her. No need for recriminations, let’s get started.”
The Marauder colonel, ‘Jeremey’ his name tag read, gave Rika an unreadable smile and turned his attention to Tanis, while Major Tim contented himself with glaring at Rika, though he didn’t speak further.
Rika wasn’t surprised at his attitude in general—though she’d expected him to show more restraint in public. He must know one of the two colonels, to think he could operate with such impunity. He’d continually badgered Heather and Scarcliff, even attempting to coerce Barne while Rika had been at Hudson.
Ultimately, she’d had to instruct her company leadership to ignore the major entirely.
It was obvious what Tim had been doing. With the Old Man gone, he was trying to either prove himself to the new Marauder leadership, or consolidate control of his assets and strike out on his own.
However, with Rika controlling most of the Marauders in the Albany System, that plan hadn’t gotten very far.
Once they received word that two colonels had come back from Marauder HQ on the ISF courier, he had ceased all attempts of communication with her.
It had surprised Rika that neither of the colonels had reached out before the meeting, but it was also possible that they had decided to leave first impressions for the physical realm.
“Very well,” Lieutenant Colonel Alice replied to Tanis. “Let’s begin. It is our understanding that you wish to hire the Marauders for an operation within the Nietzschean Empire.”
“That is correct,” Tanis said as she reached for the glass of water in front of her, lifting it while she continued to speak. “The Nietzscheans need to be put down, and I believe the Marauders have enough skin in the game to pull it off.”
Colonel Jeremey folded his hands on the table and nodded, looking down for a moment before shifting his gaze back to Tanis. “True, we’ve been at war with Nietzschea for some time, and General Mill had always favored missions that would harm them, but this is a little out of our league.”
“Is it?” Tanis asked, cocking an eyebrow as she took a sip of her water. “From what I’ve seen, Marauders mop the floor with the Niets whenever your forces go head to head.”
“There are a finite number of Marauders,” Jeremey said, spreading his arms wide. “We need to stick to engagements where we can achieve clear victory with minimal losses. Recklessness in missions…like toppling the Politica, attacking a Nietzschean fleet tucked inside a gas giant, or riding to your rescue under the nose of the largest Nietzschean armada anyone has seen in decades, is not our modus operandi.”
As Jeremey spoke, both Tim and Alice fixed their unblinking gazes on Rika, and she resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. She wished she had her GNR on her right arm; she never knew what to do with two hands.
Alas, sitting at a conference table with a meter-long weapon attached to her arm was even less comfortable.
Once again, it was Tanis who came to her rescue, only a few words being necessary to change the direction of the conversation.
“Maybe it should be.”
Jeremey’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and Alice spoke up. “Would the ISF or your allies be able to offer us support on the mission?”
“Well,” Tanis began, steepling her fingers. “As I’ve already mentioned to Captain Rika and Major Tim, we’re prepared to upgrade the mechs that were involved in the action here, as well as Tim’s crews. We have a list of things we can do that will be sustainable with your lower levels of tech—not everything we have is on the table. Some of our mods would kill you in a decade if you didn’t have our maintenance systems.”
“That’s a bit vague. How will that help us beat the Nietzscheans?” Jeremey asked.
“Stealth systems, better batteries, more efficient and more reliable weapons,” Tanis ticked the items on her fingers. “We’ll take what you have and make it more efficient.”
“It’s impressive tech, sir,” Rika weighed in. “Their stealth systems render
a person completely invisible to any scan we have.”
“That’s great on the ground,” Alice said, giving Rika an appraising glance. “But we have to get our ships to the fight before hitting the dirt.” She returned her focus to Tanis. “We’ve heard that you have similar stealth tech for your ships, as well as invincible shields.”
The admiral nodded. “We do, yes, and we’d consider outfitting some ships with that, but it is not tech we give out in great numbers. A very strong concern of ours is that we do not let those systems fall into enemy hands. As a result, ships that get stasis shields or our stealth tech have failsafes built in.”
“Failsafes?” Colonel Jeremey asked.
“Kaboom,” Captain Rachel said as she spread her hands wide. “On tamper, or if there is a possibility that the ship will be disabled in unfriendly territory. There are manual triggers, too.”
“Seriously?” Major Tim asked. “You put bombs in ships?”
“Better we lose one ship than see the enemy gain this technology. How long do you think this region of space would stand against a Nietzschean Empire that possessed stasis shields and our stealth tech?”
The thought was a sobering one, and the two Marauder colonels nodded while Tim continued his glower.
“Well, I’ll pass on those systems getting installed on the ‘Lark and the ‘Dream,” he sneered. “Ships stand enough chance of getting blown up as it is.”
“It’s a calculated risk,” Rachel said in agreement.
“One that you take on yourselves?” Colonel Jeremey asked. “Is this ship rigged to blow if those systems are compromised?”
Rachel shook her head. “The I2 doesn’t have stealth capability. It’s not feasible on a ship this size. When your engines are larger than space stations, it’s a tad difficult to hide their optical emissions, let alone the rest of the spectrum. As for our stasis shields—”
Bob intoned, his voice feeling like someone had just parked a fuel tanker in Rika’s head and struck it with a building-sized hammer.
Rika saw that the other Marauders were grimacing, but Rachel only gave a soft laugh before adding, “Bob will ensure that the ship is destroyed before our stasis—or other—tech is lost. But as you saw from the recent battle, it would take more than just a few ships to defeat us, and we are very resilient to sabotage. Only people who already have our levels of technology pose a significant risk.”
Jeremey appeared unconvinced. “If you have this tech and the ability to drop tens of thousands of ships on any given location at a moment’s notice, why do you need the Marauders to take on the Nietzscheans? We’re not against helping, but our resources are better suited to small-scale strikes and policing actions.”
“This is not the only conflict the allies are involved in,” Tanis replied. “There is a war spreading across all settled space—and even beyond. While we can perform targeted offensives like this, we cannot maintain a presence to ensure conflict does not reoccur.”
“And there’s the matter of power vacuums,” Rika added. “If we jump in and take out Constantine, we’ll just be fighting the next person in the chain of command. Nietzschea is too large for that. It’s not a snake, it’s a hydra.”
Tanis spoke aloud to the group, outlining her reasoning for using the Marauders, and expanding upon what Rika had said. At the same time, she also addressed Rika’s question over the Link.
Rika couldn’t help but be impressed with how well Tanis could carry on two conversations at once. There were no pauses, or hints that she’d lost focus on either one. Rika, on the other hand, had to almost ignore Tanis’s vocal response to focus on the mental one.
Rika had heard of General Lloyd. Everyone in the Marauders had always spoken of him with respect, though he was not senior. There was a Major General named Julia in the Marauders, though she was stationed in the former Politica, and probably still unaware of the events at Pyra.
Rika said as much to Tanis, and the admiral winked at her before saying,
Tanis had moved on to outlining some of her initial targets. She thought it best to hit the Nietzscheans around the edges of the Empire, to weaken their perimeter before moving in to strike harder targets, deeper in enemy space. It would also make Nietzschea less of a threat to Septhia and the former Thebans if they were focused on defense rather than offense.
“Unless they just decide to strike out again,” Alice said, appearing to be giving Tanis’s words honest consideration. “If they think Septhia is hitting them, they’ll just mount a force to crush it once and for all.”
Tanis’s brow lowered. “Perhaps. But they just mounted their biggest offensive in two decades and suffered near-complete losses. Are they the sort to swing that hammer again?”
Alice ran a hand down the side of her face. “Stars, Admiral Richards, I have no idea. Back in the Genevian war, yes, they would have. They would beat themselves against a target until they’d taken it out. Stars, this is their second strike on Pyra in as many years. They don’t like to lose. But then, they’ve never suffered a loss like this—not that I know of. They’re going to try to cover it up, sweep it under the rug, but will they risk another…?”
“I say they will,” Tim said, shaking his head. “You don’t know the Niets like we do.”
Colonel Borden snorted. “Having just lost nearly seventy thousand ships, do you really think they’d immediately send another fleet into the same system where they’ve suffered two major defeats? It would be one thing if we’d been decimated as well, but we only lost six hundred ships. They won’t even know how to understand that, let alone counter it.”
“Maybe,” Jeremey allowed. “Or maybe they’ll hit us all across the Septhian Alliance at once. Can you protect four hundred systems simultaneously?”
“Now you’re just getting far-fetched,” a voice said from the doorway, and everyone turned to see a tall woman entering the room. Her once-black hair was streaked with grey, and she walked with a slight limp. She walked to the foot of the table, and her amber eyes surveyed the room, highlighting a sharp intelligence behind them.
“General Julia!” Colonel Jeremey exclaimed as the Marauders all rose.
“At ease,” Julia waved her hand before anyone had managed a salute. “Sit. We’ve wasted enough time with your conjecture.”
Everyone sat, and Julia nodded to Tanis. “Thank you for sending a ship to bring me here. Given that I am in command of the Marauders, it seems fitting that I attend these negotiations.”
“But General Lloyd—” Colonel Jeremey began, only to be cut off by Julia.
“Will be informed of my decision on this matter when I return to the Ontario System to meet with him.” Julia looked at the Marauders, her gaze ultimately settling on Rika. “None of you remember this from the beginning of the war, but the Niets behave very differently when they think a cause is lost. They have no compunctions when it comes to cutting and running. We had some early victories in the war, where we were able to rout them from entire sectors.”
“I read about those battles, General,” Jeremey interjected. “Ultimately, the Niets took those systems.”
Julia nodded. “Because we were complacent. We failed to press our advantage and they regrouped faster than we expected. That is why we must press it now. Never again will we have such an opportunity to strike against them.”
Rika felt immense relief to hear the conviction in General Julia’s voice. She’d feared that with Mill’s death, the likes of Jeremey and Tim would be in control of the Marauders, pulling them away from any meaningful work—from the Old Man’s vision.
Tanis nodded. “Well said, General Julia. Tell me, what sort of forces will the Marauders be able to make available for this mission?”
Julia’s gaze still hadn’t left Rika, the General’s unblinking eyes beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. “Well, I suspect that Rika’s company will go. I imagine I’d have to fire her to keep that from happening—and even that probably wouldn’t work. I also have four ships filled with mechs inbound from our camps in the Politica. I believe we can form an entire battalion of mechs—should they all sign on for this fight.”
“And ships?” Tanis asked.
“Current Marauder fleet strength sits at one thousand, four hundred and seventy-two warships, along with two hundred and thirteen repair and supply vessels. Of that number, only five hundred and ninety are capital ships. When it comes to the Allies’ space force, we’re a drop in the bucket.”
“And Marauder ships may not be ideal for all the ops facing the strike force—at least not initially,” Tanis added. “However, the Allies have recently come into possession of a large number of Nietzschean spacecraft. We could bolster the vessels Rika already secured, and that could be the primary strike force.”
Julia turned back to Rika, her unblinking amber eyes resuming their penetrating stare. “I read about that in the brief I received. I feel like we set our sights too low for you, Rika. Mind you, a captain cannot command a battalion.”
The general’s wording was unclear to Rika, but she feared the worst. My promotions in the Marauders have already been meteoric; I doubt that the General would—